Welcome to the DotNext conference
On June 3, the fifth DotNext conference for developers on the .NET platform will take place in St. Petersburg. Romuald Zdebsky , head of Microsoft games in Central and Eastern Europe, who will make a report on the development of games on the Microsoft platform - a technology overview, and Microsoft technology evangelist Dmitry Soshnikov , who will speak at DotNext report "How many lives have. NET: reflecting on the fate of your favorite platform, the death of Silverlight and the like."
Dmitry Soshnikov : The appearance of .NET is a reaction to the increasing complexity of software systems. When it became too difficult to create serious applications in C ++, especially considering the existence of various computing platforms, the goal was to radically simplify the process of creating software, including multi-platform software. And in the end, researchers learned how to isolate hardware difficulties (and, at the same time, a number of labor-intensive moments, such as memory allocation, multithreading, etc.) at the level of an abstract virtual machine, and let the application programmer create code for this machine. This is how Java and .NET appeared. But the main purpose of the Java language was the ability to run the same bytecode on all devices, while the .NET platform was proud of the variety of supported programming languages.
It must be said that the main goals were in fact already achieved upon the creation of the platform. Now we have moved much further. On the basis of .NET, you can write applications for all major mobile platforms and microcontrollers. In the arsenal of a .NET programmer, there is a whole range of languages ​​from C # and F # to Python and Objective C. The code based on .NET is used both on devices and in the cloud. The programmer’s dream has come true - knowing only one technology stack, it can be productive by developing almost any program code.
Romuald Zdebsky : Perhaps the most interesting advantage for developers on .NET is that on all devices, on all form factors, the Windows 10 operating system is now relevant - with a single core, a single application store and, which is especially important for developers, a single API that allows you to develop a game and create a single installation package to enable users to play this game on any device with any form factor, on smartphones, laptops, desktops, Xbox One, HoloLens. Developers have always dreamed of less engaging in low-level technical things related to porting or the ability to run applications on various form factors, and focus more on what is interesting — on creating application logic, innovative algorithms, improving performance, optimization, and so on. .d And just Windows 10, Universal Windows Platform, allows you to implement it.
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Romuald Zdebsky : This question contains the answer - taking into account the answer to the first question. Now you can create applications not for some sparsely populated reality, but for a very large Windows ecosystem. On Windows 10, there are already more than 300 million devices. The growth of the installation base of Windows 10 is already almost 1.5 times faster than the growth of the very popular Windows 7 at one time. More than a billion PCs on the planet can now be upgraded to Windows 10 for free. We expect that the installation base of Windows for the next two to three years 10 will reach more than a billion devices - and access to this huge audience is provided by .NET developers.
Dmitry Soshnikov : Microsoft is a big company and they like to scold it. It was very popular, for example, to criticize the “closeness” of .NET, what is called “vendor lock”. But now the situation has changed radically, since the future of .NET is no longer determined by Microsoft, but by the .NET Foundation. The source code of the new generation .NET is open and being developed by collective efforts on the open source model.
Another popular “claim” is frequent change. First there was the classic .NET platform, then Silverlight, then the Universal Windows Platform - and each time it was necessary to relearn. Some of this will have to agree - but this is true not only in relation to .NET. In fact, any developer should be ready all his life to learn something new and live in conditions of uncertainty! Moreover, any serious professional in any subject area should be ready for this.
Romuald Zdebsky : When the .NET platform appeared, it primarily covered the most popular form factors at the time — the desktop Windows client and Windows Server. Then it was one of the most popular form factors in the world. But with the growing popularity of the web, the popularity of various interactive web plug-ins, such as Adobe Flash , etc., has grown. Therefore, we have developed a “lightweight” browser-based “add-in” platform for Silverlight, so that developers can create rich, interactive web applications based on .NET. Today, browser add-ons are falling in popularity, the industry is moving toward HTML 5, so browsers work with predictable performance without native add-ins for basic rendering.
And finally, the industry has moved towards mobile applications. For the first version of Windows Phone, the Silverlight platform was used - the “lightweight” browser-based add-in. And now Windows 10, the Universal Windows Platform, is a .NET with the ability to create applications and games in C #. Xamarin has joined Microsoft, and we have made its toolkit free — this is a great opportunity for .NET developers to use their skills to create cross-platform applications that work on both iOS and Android. The Unity game development environment is very popular, in which you can also use C #.
By the way, the same thing happens on the server side - .NET Core allows .NET developers to create, for example, ASP.NET applications for Mac OS and Linux.
Dmitry Soshnikov : Silverlight is in fact the first attempt to make an alternative “light” framework, based on the principles of .NET, that can work in a browser on different platforms. Due to its “lightness”, it was used for Windows Phone 7 applications.
But now the very idea of ​​using plug-ins is fading away, and the generation of Windows Phone 7 has been supplanted by more modern devices, so Silverlight’s relevance is falling. Instead, there are new reincarnations of the .NET platform, incl. .NET Native and .NET Core, based on the same basic principles and basic APIs.
Romuald Zdebsky : Why do we change something? In order for both the platform and the developers to remain relevant in the current market. We want to be a competitive platform, we want to develop. All the changes we make are somehow connected with this. All this is being done as part of a general openness strategy to ensure that both Microsoft itself and developers on the Microsoft platform remain competitive.
Dmitry Soshnikov : By the way, the basic principles and core APIs of the .NET platform have remained unchanged for more than 10 years, so .NET can be considered one of the most stable technologies, especially when compared to various new-fangled frameworks that manage to become popular and die in just a year .
Romuald Zdebsky : We need to speak more broadly here; you cannot lock yourself only on Windows Phone. .NET allows you to create universal games that run on smartphones, on tablets, on personal computers and on game consoles. This is the only way you will reach your entire potential audience with your games. If you focus only on smartphones, then more than half of the audience will be left behind. It is already wrong to create separate versions of games for different form factors. It is necessary to create a single game, providing for a correct, reasonable scaling. Going out now with a game that is not designed for all form factors is not the most effective approach.
The latest development tools will allow repackaging games for personal computers into packages for downloading to the Windows application store and distributing through it. I will elaborate on this in my report on DOTNEXT.
Dmitry Soshnikov : In my opinion - the most optimistic! The development of .NET occurs in several directions:
Personally, when I switched to .NET from the Java world in 2003, I felt much happier. And today's platform .NET makes the programmer happier in all respects - whether it is the ability to use smart and beautiful F # language or by allowing you to immediately write applications for the whole variety of mobile platforms and cloud services.
Do you share the point of view of specialists or want to get involved in a dispute about the prospects of .NET? Nothing is easier - everyone will be heard on DotNext Piter .
There is very little time left - take care of the plane, train, car, motorcycle, bike to St. Petersburg in advance.
What were the original goals of creating a .NET platform? Are they achieved?
Dmitry Soshnikov : The appearance of .NET is a reaction to the increasing complexity of software systems. When it became too difficult to create serious applications in C ++, especially considering the existence of various computing platforms, the goal was to radically simplify the process of creating software, including multi-platform software. And in the end, researchers learned how to isolate hardware difficulties (and, at the same time, a number of labor-intensive moments, such as memory allocation, multithreading, etc.) at the level of an abstract virtual machine, and let the application programmer create code for this machine. This is how Java and .NET appeared. But the main purpose of the Java language was the ability to run the same bytecode on all devices, while the .NET platform was proud of the variety of supported programming languages.
It must be said that the main goals were in fact already achieved upon the creation of the platform. Now we have moved much further. On the basis of .NET, you can write applications for all major mobile platforms and microcontrollers. In the arsenal of a .NET programmer, there is a whole range of languages ​​from C # and F # to Python and Objective C. The code based on .NET is used both on devices and in the cloud. The programmer’s dream has come true - knowing only one technology stack, it can be productive by developing almost any program code.
Romuald Zdebsky : Perhaps the most interesting advantage for developers on .NET is that on all devices, on all form factors, the Windows 10 operating system is now relevant - with a single core, a single application store and, which is especially important for developers, a single API that allows you to develop a game and create a single installation package to enable users to play this game on any device with any form factor, on smartphones, laptops, desktops, Xbox One, HoloLens. Developers have always dreamed of less engaging in low-level technical things related to porting or the ability to run applications on various form factors, and focus more on what is interesting — on creating application logic, innovative algorithms, improving performance, optimization, and so on. .d And just Windows 10, Universal Windows Platform, allows you to implement it.
')
Romuald Zdebsky : This question contains the answer - taking into account the answer to the first question. Now you can create applications not for some sparsely populated reality, but for a very large Windows ecosystem. On Windows 10, there are already more than 300 million devices. The growth of the installation base of Windows 10 is already almost 1.5 times faster than the growth of the very popular Windows 7 at one time. More than a billion PCs on the planet can now be upgraded to Windows 10 for free. We expect that the installation base of Windows for the next two to three years 10 will reach more than a billion devices - and access to this huge audience is provided by .NET developers.
Dmitry Soshnikov : Microsoft is a big company and they like to scold it. It was very popular, for example, to criticize the “closeness” of .NET, what is called “vendor lock”. But now the situation has changed radically, since the future of .NET is no longer determined by Microsoft, but by the .NET Foundation. The source code of the new generation .NET is open and being developed by collective efforts on the open source model.
Another popular “claim” is frequent change. First there was the classic .NET platform, then Silverlight, then the Universal Windows Platform - and each time it was necessary to relearn. Some of this will have to agree - but this is true not only in relation to .NET. In fact, any developer should be ready all his life to learn something new and live in conditions of uncertainty! Moreover, any serious professional in any subject area should be ready for this.
Romuald Zdebsky : When the .NET platform appeared, it primarily covered the most popular form factors at the time — the desktop Windows client and Windows Server. Then it was one of the most popular form factors in the world. But with the growing popularity of the web, the popularity of various interactive web plug-ins, such as Adobe Flash , etc., has grown. Therefore, we have developed a “lightweight” browser-based “add-in” platform for Silverlight, so that developers can create rich, interactive web applications based on .NET. Today, browser add-ons are falling in popularity, the industry is moving toward HTML 5, so browsers work with predictable performance without native add-ins for basic rendering.
And finally, the industry has moved towards mobile applications. For the first version of Windows Phone, the Silverlight platform was used - the “lightweight” browser-based add-in. And now Windows 10, the Universal Windows Platform, is a .NET with the ability to create applications and games in C #. Xamarin has joined Microsoft, and we have made its toolkit free — this is a great opportunity for .NET developers to use their skills to create cross-platform applications that work on both iOS and Android. The Unity game development environment is very popular, in which you can also use C #.
By the way, the same thing happens on the server side - .NET Core allows .NET developers to create, for example, ASP.NET applications for Mac OS and Linux.
Dmitry Soshnikov : Silverlight is in fact the first attempt to make an alternative “light” framework, based on the principles of .NET, that can work in a browser on different platforms. Due to its “lightness”, it was used for Windows Phone 7 applications.
But now the very idea of ​​using plug-ins is fading away, and the generation of Windows Phone 7 has been supplanted by more modern devices, so Silverlight’s relevance is falling. Instead, there are new reincarnations of the .NET platform, incl. .NET Native and .NET Core, based on the same basic principles and basic APIs.
Romuald Zdebsky : Why do we change something? In order for both the platform and the developers to remain relevant in the current market. We want to be a competitive platform, we want to develop. All the changes we make are somehow connected with this. All this is being done as part of a general openness strategy to ensure that both Microsoft itself and developers on the Microsoft platform remain competitive.
Dmitry Soshnikov : By the way, the basic principles and core APIs of the .NET platform have remained unchanged for more than 10 years, so .NET can be considered one of the most stable technologies, especially when compared to various new-fangled frameworks that manage to become popular and die in just a year .
Romuald Zdebsky : We need to speak more broadly here; you cannot lock yourself only on Windows Phone. .NET allows you to create universal games that run on smartphones, on tablets, on personal computers and on game consoles. This is the only way you will reach your entire potential audience with your games. If you focus only on smartphones, then more than half of the audience will be left behind. It is already wrong to create separate versions of games for different form factors. It is necessary to create a single game, providing for a correct, reasonable scaling. Going out now with a game that is not designed for all form factors is not the most effective approach.
The latest development tools will allow repackaging games for personal computers into packages for downloading to the Windows application store and distributing through it. I will elaborate on this in my report on DOTNEXT.
Dmitry Soshnikov : In my opinion - the most optimistic! The development of .NET occurs in several directions:
- Support for various platforms and runtimes. Now .NET is running on compact devices running Windows 10, on Linux - in general, almost everywhere where program code can work, from microcontrollers to the cloud.
- Especially important multiplatform in terms of coverage of mobile platforms - iOS, Android, Windows Phone. Thanks to the recent acquisition of Xamarin, a US manufacturer of multi-platform programming tools, now any developer can create applications for any mobile platform, while on any platform, using proven languages ​​(C # / F #) and tools. It is worth adding here Unity as a gaming platform, also based on C # /. NET, and we get full coverage of mobile platforms!
- It is important to mention extending the API to various areas, such as building compilers, for example. The Roslyn toolkit allows you to manipulate C # / VB programs and easily create tools that are embedded in the compilation process.
- Dissemination of functional programming ideas and related technologies for fast data processing and analysis. Around the F # language, a whole ecosystem of products emerges that allow intellectual processing and research of data online, then transferring it to the cloud. A number of companies (Jet.com's most famous case), using an F # based technological stack, have significantly increased their efficiency.
Personally, when I switched to .NET from the Java world in 2003, I felt much happier. And today's platform .NET makes the programmer happier in all respects - whether it is the ability to use smart and beautiful F # language or by allowing you to immediately write applications for the whole variety of mobile platforms and cloud services.
Do you share the point of view of specialists or want to get involved in a dispute about the prospects of .NET? Nothing is easier - everyone will be heard on DotNext Piter .
There is very little time left - take care of the plane, train, car, motorcycle, bike to St. Petersburg in advance.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/283238/
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